A Happy Face: County Putting on Its Best for Open

BY MATTHEW MORIARTY: Staff Writer, The Pilot

Workers all across Moore County are working hard — often behind the scenes — to help Mother Nature put on her best face for the U.S. Open.

Everyone knows it’s been a cool spring, but not everyone understands how much the cold threatens to upset Pinehurst’s landscaping plan, which has been in place since early this year.

Though a shortage in the sun’s rays has crimped their timing, landscapers are making the best of the situation.

Their job has its quirky aspects. For example, the 45,000 visitors expected for the U.S. Open, beginning June 13 in Pinehurst, will appreciate the 80,000 day lilies planted along county highways for aesthetic reasons. But the N.C. Department of Transportation likes them because they’re cheap. Most of them come from an out-of-state prison farm, where they were painstakingly raised and taken care of by men in orange jumpsuits.

“It’s an economic thing,” said Raymond Sproles, division operations engineer with DOT.

Another reason why DOT likes the flowers is that they are hardy perennials that will return every year rather than have to be uprooted and replaced like the wildflowers DOT sometimes uses.

In fact, some of the day lilies along Moore County roads were planted by DOT workers four or five years ago.

“With minimal maintenance, they’ll come back year after year,” Sproles said.

State workers have been spraying, mulching, planting, mulching, plant-ing and mulching again. The Pine-hurst Traffic Circle has been a center of activity, as is the stretch of U.S. 15-501 that leads from the circle down to Aberdeen.

When out-of-towners come in, the first thing they’ll see are Moore County’s roads. DOT understands this and wants them to look as good as possible.

Though some have said that the department shouldn’t use so many state resources on one county, “we justify it because of the economic value to the state,” Sproles said.

Put simply, if tourists like what they see here, they are more likely to come back. Furthermore, if business owners like what they see, they might relocate or expand their businesses, which would create jobs.

“Any time something is drawing as many people (as the U.S. Open), we want to make a good impression,” Sproles said. “If people want to come back to the area, it puts more money in the coffer of the state. ... It pays dividends down the road.”

‘Rehabilitation Project’

Yet he doesn’t like the implication that DOT is doing things for the U.S. Open that it wouldn’t normally do. He insists that most of what is going on is maintenance that would be performed anyway, and that the DOT is simply making the effort to have it coincide with the Open.

“Landscapings and plantings,” he said — “these are things we’ve been doing on roadsides since 1991.”

To put it in terms that the day lily growers would understand, Sproles said DOT’s efforts are more to “rehabilitate” than “enhance.”

That means checking to make sure that permanent plantings like crape myrtles, scrubs and grasses are healthy.

“We’ve added some (flower) beds,” Sproles said, “But for the most part it’s a rehabilitation project.”

The department bought about 50,000 annual plants, he said, but the number that actually go into the ground is a little bit lower because plants get damaged in transport and during installation. The number in the ground is between 45,000 and 50,000, he said.

“We tried to select more strategic locations and increase the volume a little,” he said. “We added about a third to half more (than in a normal year).”

Thanks to the cheap availability of day lilies, DOT is replacing some of its older plantings with them.

“The bulk of your cost becomes installation,” Sproles said.

The U.S. Open didn’t add to DOT’s workload, he said, but it did change the timing of things.

“This year, we wanted to be finished by a certain date,” he said. “We decided to focus on Moore County. It was the appropriate thing to do. ... With the exception of the volume of the annuals, it was all stuff we would do on a regular basis anyway.”

Great Litter Sweep

Another part of making the highways look good is keeping them free of litter.

DOT is helping by pitching in with the Great Moore Litter Sweep which was taking place Saturday.

Keep Moore County Beautiful organized the litter sweep, whose goal is to clean up every piece of litter on every main road in Moore County.

Church groups, Scouts, municipal governments, garden clubs, businesses and many more joined the members of Keep Moore County Beautiful and walked the roadways dressed in reflective vests, dropping trash into orange bags.

DOT provided the supplies and is going to collect the filled bags from the roadsides.

Towns Busy, Too

As the golf fans enter southern Moore County, then see the towns. Each member of Moore’s golf triangle has its own personality and own aesthetic appeal. The municipal governments are doing their part.

Aberdeen has added some plant beds around the town’s entrances and done a few little things here or there, said Jim McRae, Aberdeen superintendent of public works. It’s all about making the place look clean, he said.

“The sidewalks hadn’t been edged in a long time,” McRae said. “We were going to do that anyway.”

In Pinehurst, Village Manager Andy Wilkison said that the village didn’t make any special plantings. It’s just tidying up by making sure everything is trimmed and cut back.

“We’re just trying to get in tip-top shape for the tournament,” Wilkison said.

The Focus of Activity

The highways and the towns are just a prelude to the Championship grounds. Pinehurst Resort workers and hired hands are scrambling to make sure Pinehurst No. 2 impresses.

On Friday, south of the corporate village, heavy-treaded machinery rumbled by on a muddy dirt road. Workers drove lawn mowers covered in green clippings while golf carts and mini-flatbed haulers zipped over hills.

Workers formed a line near the back of an 18-wheel truck, tossing potted plants down the line and setting them neatly on the ground. Each truck has about 4,000 plants inside and takes three to four hours to unload.

Pinehurst has about 20 grounds workers normally, according to Grounds Superintendent Chris Burrows, and it contracted for about 25 more to help with installation.

They’ve been working 12-hour days, seven days a week for the past two weeks.

“It’s been sunup to sundown for the last two weeks,” said Brian Frailey, a landscape architect with the Hayter Firm, the business that designed the landscaping plan.

Burrows hopes the installation will be completed by Monday.

“I’m predicting by the 6th,” Burrows said. “Everything will be in the ground. Then we’ll do the fine-tuning, like mulching.”

The plants arrive in plastic pots, and they’ll go into the ground while still in the pots. When the Open is over, the workers will just pull the pots up out of the ground and they’ll be ready for resale.

About 20,000 of them will surround the corporate village, the merchandise tent, the trophy club, the Putter Boy tent and the media tent, Burrows said.

Months of Work Culminates

Frailey is collaborating with Burrows during the installation. The Hayter Firm finished the landscaping plan in January, Frailey said. During the entire process, the Hayter Firm and Pinehurst Resort worked with the plant growers to fill the order.

“They grew this stuff specifically for us,” Frailey said.

The landscaping plan began with the sidewalks, which McKenzie Paving Company started in early April.

“He gave us places to plant,” Burrows said.

On April 25, Pinehurst Resort started to put trees into the ground. There are magnolias, crape myrtles, oaks and more.

Later the smaller plantings started to come in. Though Pinehurst has no signature plant like The Masters and its azaleas, there are holly bushes, day lilies, lantana, roses, cannas and coleus.

“Basically, we’re looking for things that bloom brightly,” Frailey said.

In total, the grounds landscaping job consists of 12,000 to 15,000 bales of hay, 800 cubic yards of bark and 6,000 man hours, Burrows said. The grounds encompass about two acres of temporary plantings.

“That’s pretty amazing,” Frailey said.

Cool Spring Puts Kink

Mother Nature isn’t always cooperative. The cool spring has delayed flower shipments from the nurseries in South Carolina.

“The biggest kink has been the cold spring,” Frailey said.

It’s hurt the trees the most. The leaves aren’t as full as they should be. The nurseries managed to force the flowers.

“We picked stuff to look good during the Open,” Frailey said. “A lot of this stuff has been timed. That’s the problem with the cold spring.”

There’s not much that can be done for the trees.

“The trees have been a logistical nightmare,” Frailey said.

There’s the possibility that the cold spring may actually help the landscapers too, because they don’t want the flowers to open early.

“It’s good and bad,” said Frailey. “A lot of people won’t even notice. ... We want them to bloom the week of the Open.”